One Piece 777 Review: More Zoro-Pica Buildup

One Piece, Chapter 777: Zoro vs. Pica 

In which we do get some Zoro versus Pica, but only in the second half of the chapter. It's a bit boring, really, since like the Kyros/Diamante fight, we've already gotten a fair amount of Zoro and Pica's fights ever since the big Dressrosa finale begun and all of it amounted to 'Pica does stone things, Zoro slashes Pica's big stone form like butter, whoops that's not his true body' and frankly it's been dragged on for way too long.

The Jinbe cover story seems to be coming to a close with the random sea creatures apologizing. I cannot possibly elaborate because I have no idea who these things are other than Wadatsumi.

We start off with a couple of flashbacks of how Scarlet's death affected King Riku, Viola and Tank LePanto, before we see Diamante finally falling down and apparently slamming his head (and cracking his neck?) on Scarlet's grave. Which is a nice, excellent way for Diamante to be taken out, I must say. Robin's apparently wounded because the flowers didn't get all of Diamante's spiky balls and she was protecting Rebecca with her real body. Dammit Robin do something cool!

We get a fair amount of unnecessary recapping on the part of Viola and King Riku about 'four more executives are left' which really isn't necessary at all. (Granted, Bleach got two chapters recently just recapping, so) King Riku and Tank and some others go down to try and help the people, Usopp and the two samurai are just lying around, Fujitora is helping the people too...

Pica is then just bursting out of the ground practically everywhere. First near where Kyros, Rebecca and Robin are. Robin even lampshades how long it takes Zoro to take down Pica. Pica mocks Diamante for a bit, and then takes a fair while to just mock King Riku and blame him for Kyros and Rebecca's suffering, which doesn't really make sense but whatever. Pica apparently does this to confirm that, yes, popular opinion is in King Riku's favour, and doesn't even finish off the two wounded people there and just heads back to Zoro. What.

Pica then just pops up everywhere and summons rock spikes to beat up the injured combatants. Hajrudin, Don Chinjao, Ideo, Baby 5... Sai gets squished in between two spiky walls to protect Baby 5, though he activates his armament Haki so I'm sure he's going to be fine. Pica's giant head tries to eat Zoro with 'Bite Stone', but Zoro unleashes a single sword attack, Ittoryu Baki, which cuts him... just like every freaking time they tangled. And apparently by attacking the wounded, Pica has driven Zoro far away enough so he can just reappear as a giant close by and crush the king because he's a Doflamingo fanatic, it appears.

Because he's so afraid of Zoro, that's why. I'm not sure why he doesn't just appear right next to the king and do his Charle-stone thing over and over, but eh.

He reforms as a far more gigantic stone giant than before, and we get a lot of people reacting from Robin to Bartolomeo to Sai to Chinjao to Usopp... while Zoro is just thinking about plans. Plan A: send a slashing attack, which is too far. Plan B: jump and climb Pica, which Zoro might not be able to reach. Plan C: shout to warn Usopp. Plan D: call Usopp on the Den-Den Mushi... except Zoro doesn't have one. Oh Zoro, you complete ditz. Zoro finally decides on Plan E... which is a combination of plan A and B. He basically wants to fly and slash Pica. Uh... great plan?

Zoro opens his eye and for a moment I thought he opened his left, scarred eye. But no, it's just the regular right eye. And Pica just looks gross with all these weird tentacle-veins on his back.

But it seems that Zoro/Pica will end next chapter, which is about enough pacing to make the Zoro-Pica fight not feel too dragged out. I just wished this chapter was stronger, though. It's got way too much time spent on just talking and dragging it on with Zoro's plans and Viola playing as a commentator and Pica just asking Kyros about what he thinks of Riku... we should've just moved from Diamante getting taken out to Pica and Zoro's fight and him going off to kill Riku on his own volition. But whatever the case, I am excited to see Zoro completely fuck Pica up next week.

Also I have to remember Pica has a really high-pitched chipmunk voice. That isn't something that works well in a manga setting, I'm afraid.